Mountain View Fire Rescue shows off its expanded Niwot station

NIWOT -- Members of this community flocked to Mountain View Fire Rescue's "grand reopening" of its expanded and renovated Niwot fire station on Saturday.

Construction of the rural fire district's $800,000 project to build a two-story, 1,940-square-foot addition to Mountain View's Station No. 4 at 8500 Niwot Road -- along with the remodeling of the existing station's interior, a complete repainting of the exterior, replacements of the station's roof and outdoor patio deck and grading to improve storm drainage on the property -- began in August and was completed in early December, according to deputy fire chief Steven Pischke.

Niwot residents Jill and Bill Whitener were among the people who showed up to see and applaud the results at Saturday's open house.

He said that when he and his wife moved to this area about 26 years ago, the first vehicle to show up at a fire from what then was an almost-all-volunteer department would sometimes be "a Ford Maverick with lights on it."

Jill Whitener said she wants next to arrange to go on a ride-along with a Mountain View crew.

The Niwot station can now house and staff an engine, a water tender, a brush truck and an ambulance, Pischke said, along with the bedrooms and more comfortable living accommodations for the three to four professional ambulance and firefighting crew members who'll be based there at any given time.

Mountain View Fire Rescue has been covering Niwot-area emergencies from its other stations while construction was under way at its Niwot Road facility, and the district resumed operations from the Niwot station just this past week.

The original building was constructed in 1982 and had four fire apparatus bays, a bathroom, a kitchen and a storage and meeting room. A 1993 addition provided a training room and what later became an increasingly cramped upper-level day room that -- until the latest project -- included only two small bedrooms and a coffee bar.

The expanded upper-level living quarters has four bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchenette. A ground-floor area that once was crowded with desks and office equipment has been converted to an open area that the Niwot Community Association now plans to use for its monthly meetings, Pischke said.

There's now a ground level room with weights and exercise equipment that's allowed Mountain View staffers to move their workouts out of the building's truck bay area where they formerly had to sometimes cope with diesel fuel fumes from the vehicles stationed there -- fumes that Pischke said "weren't really conducive to working out."

For personnel assigned to 48-hour shifts in the pre-expansion facility's crowded space, "it was like working out of a trailer," Pischke said. Now that the upgrades and additions have been completed, Mountain View firefighters "love it. This is like coming to a brand new station."

Golden Triangle Construction Inc. was the general contractor for the project.

Winston Richards, 3, of Niwot, sits in the cab of a fire truck during the open house of Mountain View Fire Rescue's newly remodeled Station 4, in Niwot, on Saturday Feb. 2, 2013.
(Lewis Geyer/Times-Call)

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